


The (incredibly) awkward courtship rituals of Hatake Kakashi

by Talavin



Category: Naruto
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Courtship, Fluff, Icha Icha Series, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and Gai is the only one who believes it, but Izumo kind of thinks it's cute, but he thinks he's super cool, kakashi is so awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 07:51:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11249358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talavin/pseuds/Talavin
Summary: The first time his secret admirer broke into his apartment, Izumo thought it was a threat.Kotetsu stared at the flowers, then at Izumo, and then back at the flowers, switching his gaze between the two like he couldn't understand which baffled him more."So... Let me get this straight: you had me sprint across the entire village, fearing the whole way that you were dead or dying, all because somebody left youflowers?"Thus began the most awkward courtship in Konoha history.





	The (incredibly) awkward courtship rituals of Hatake Kakashi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/gifts).



> A/N: This is based on my headcanon of Kakashi as an awkward nerd who tries desperately to be suave (even though the only person who thinks he's cool is his bff Gai). Izumo's into it though.

The first time his secret admirer broke into his apartment, Izumo thought it was a threat. 

The chunin stared cautiously at the plants on his kitchen table, senses dialed up as far as he could make them. He'd dropped his groceries on the floor as soon as he'd gotten far enough into his apartment to notice the change, leaving his hands free to grip weapons. Izumo glanced quickly over to the window, where all of his traps were still engaged, seemingly untouched. There wasn't even a hint of a chakra imprint. Whoever had broken into his apartment was clearly an expert. Izumo wracked his brain nervously, trying to figure out how he had pissed off someone so powerful. 

On the table were four flowers, lilies, that had clearly been pulled from the ground recently. There was still dirt marring their scraggly roots, and they'd only just started to wilt. Whomever was threatening him wanted Izumo to understand that they knew exactly when he was going to be home. 

Izumo couldn't sense anyone nearby, but that didn't mean anything considering that he was dealing with a professional of the highest class. Nevertheless, he'd have to risk calling for help; there was no way he'd be able to fend off somebody of this caliber on his own. 

Suddenly blurring into motion, Izumo bit his thumb and rushed through the hand signs for the summoning technique. 

There was a small puff of smoke, before Shin, his mouse summon appeared. Shin twitched his whiskers at Izumo in askance, his little pink nose scrunching up in confusion as he smelled the familiar scents of the apartment, rather than a battlefield. Izumo wanted to coo over how cute it made his friend look, but there was no time. 

"Quick, Shin," barked the chunin, "get Kotetsu. Someone is threatening my life!"

Shin squeaked in alarm before poofing away. The summon animal may be small and adorable, but there was no one better to deliver a message quickly and reliably. Kotetsu would doubtlessly be here in minutes. 

As he suspected, his partner barreled through the door shortly thereafter, panting as if he'd sprinted the entire way. Kotetsu's eyes were wide as he scanned the apartment for danger. Slowly, his panic seemed to fade into confusion. 

"Izumo, what the hell? Shin told me that you were in danger!"

Lifting a trembling hand, Izumo pointed towards the kitchen table. "Someone bypassed all my traps flawlessly and put those there."

There was a long silence while Kotetsu stared at the flowers, then at Izumo, and then back at the flowers, switching his gaze between the two like he couldn't understand which baffled him more. 

"So... Let me get this straight: you had me sprint across the entire village, fearing the whole way that you were dead or dying, all because somebody left you _flowers_?"

Izumo gaped at Kotetsu. "Flowers? These are not flowers!"

Kotetsu gave him a skeptical look. 

"Okay, yes. Technically they are flowers. But they aren't just flowers; they're a death threat!" Izumo cried shrilly. 

"A death threat," mimed Kotetsu, dumbfounded. 

"Yes! Look! They aren't just any flowers; they're lilies. Lilies are symbols of death. There's a reason why people have lilies at funerals. Someone is trying to tell me that my funeral will be soon! And there's four of them. Four! As in, shi- shi as in death!" 

Izumo took a deep breath. "And whoever put them here didn't leave a single trace of their presence. This is someone who’s a far greater shinobi than I am."

Kotetsu sidled up to him slowly like he was a rabid animal. "Um, okay. I guess I could see how _you_ would reach that conclusion." Under his breath, he continued: "You paranoid weirdo," but Izumo didn't think he was meant to hear that part. "Let me just propose an alternate theory: yesterday you were drunkenly telling the whole bar how you think lilies are the prettiest flower in the world, and so today someone thought it'd be romantic to make like a secret admirer and leave you your favorite flower."

Izumo opened his mouth to refute that ridiculous idea before... Oh. He turned his gaze to the rather sorry looking, but ultimately completely harmless flowers. "Oh," Izumo said lamely. He flushed. "But... I mean, breaking into a ninja's home without a trace is at least a little bit threatening, right," he asked, grasping at straws for something to excuse his reaction. 

Kotetsu rolled his eyes. "Yeah, it's a little creepy stalker-y. They probably should've left them on your doorstep, or at least with a note or something. But whoever could pull this off is probably a jounin, and you know how maladjusted that lot is."

There probably weren't words to express how maladjusted the Konoha jounin corps were. Now that the panic was fading, Izumo was starting to feel bad. Someone had tried to do something nice for him, and he'd responded... rather rudely. Thank goodness they weren't there to see him.

"Oh gods!" cried Izumo, before immediately lowering his voice to a hiss. "Kotetsu, if they're that sneaky... What if he stayed around to watch me and realized how poorly his gift was received!"

"What makes you think it's a 'him'?" teased Kotetsu. "But seriously I'd give it a ninety percent chance."

"Oh gods," repeated Izumo. Quickly, he rushed over to a cabinet, pulled out a vase and filled it with water. The chunin returned to the table and gingerly collected the lilies. If anything, they looked even more pathetic in the glass; there weren't nearly enough to fill the vase, and they drooped awkwardly over the sides. Nevertheless, Izumo grinned in satisfaction. 

"There!" he hummed, pleased. "That looks much better."

Kotetsu was shaking his head at Izumo, looking an odd combination of fond and exasperated. It was unfortunately a look that Izumo had gotten used to after decades of friendship with the man. "Only you could go from fearing for your life to worrying about your stalker's feelings in under a minute."

"He's not a stalker!" protested Izumo. "It's a secret admirer."

His friend just stared at him for a moment, before turning on his heel and walking out. "Whatever. Some of us actually have work to get back to, now that we know our best friend isn't getting ruthlessly murdered."

Izumo allowed Kotetsu to have the last word. After all, it was clear the other chunin was jealous that he didn't have a secret admirer. Even one as... creative as Izumo's. 

~

Over the course of the next week, Izumo received a few other gifts from his secret admirer. The morning after the flower incident, there was a bar of chocolate left on his doorstep with a note reading “Sorry about the lilies” in an untidy scrawl, confirming that the man (or woman) had in fact stuck around to witness Izumo’s disastrous reaction to their gift. The chunin felt giddy that they were still trying, regardless. The chocolate bar was the kind that was sectioned into multiple smaller pieces that could be broken off and eaten separately… and half of the bar was gone. The foil was folded over, kind of like it had been pulled out of someone’s kitchen cabinet. It was certainly an… _unconventional_ way of giving gifts, but Izumo supposed it was the thought that counted.

After that, a pair of kunai appeared, this time on his kitchen table. Apparently his admirer thought that with the chocolate being well-received, he (or she) got the green light to continue breaking into Izumo’s apartment. Even though he knew that he should be irritated by the assumption, he found himself feeling a bit thrilled every time he opened his door. Izumo had never had a secret admirer before. The kunai weren’t new. On the contrary, they were nicked and scarred, but well-oiled and maintained, and _perfectly_ balanced. They were weapons that had gotten his admirer through their fair share of battles. 

Every time he received a gift, Izumo bragged proudly to Kotetsu (who, admittedly, often seemed underwhelmed), so it really wasn’t odd that the other chunin would be asking about them now.

“So,” began Kotetsu. “Have you gotten any more presents from your stalker?”

Surely what Kotetsu was _expecting_ him to do was to protest the term ‘stalker’, and then gush about the fourth gift he’d gotten. Instead, Izumo felt his face heat until he probably resembled a tomato, and muttered a few syllables that didn’t combine into any intelligible words. Up until that point, Kotetsu had appeared mildly interested, probably only asking to fulfill his best-friend duties. Now, though, the other chunin perked up like a bloodhound that had caught the scent of prey. 

“Now what could it have been to get _that_ reaction?” Kotetsu asked with an evil grin. 

“Um.” Izumo took a few breaths, willing his blush to go away and reply with as much nonchalance and poise as humanly possible. “It was, uh, a book,” he squeaked, more closely resembling his summon than the suave-humanoid he was going for. Damn. 

Somehow, Kotetsu’s grin got even bigger. “Oh really? So the guy knows that you like to read, huh?”

“It could be a kunoichi, you know,” Izumo tried weakly. 

Kotetsu was undeterred. “And what exactly was the _title_ of this fantastic gift?”

If Izumo had made any progress in suppressing his blush, it was surely pointless, because he could feel his face burn. “It. Um… ah the title is. Ich-” He coughed. “Icha Icha Paradise.” Izumo tried to say the last three words as quietly as humanly possible, but it was for naught. Before he even finished, Kotetsu burst out into hysterically laughter. 

“Wh-what!” he managed to choke out. “’Zumo, are you telling me-” a hiccup “Are you saying… your secret admirer gave you PORN!” 

Every word Kotetsu said got louder and louder, until it ended in a shriek of laughter. The last word seemed to echo around the bar they were sitting in (“PORN-porn-porn”). In fact, it was so loud that it’d gotten the attention of everyone else in the room, and Izumo swore he could physically feel their gazes descend on him. 

Before he could protest (not that anything Kotetsu said was technically incorrect), a pair of familiar faces approached their table. 

“Who gave Izumo porn, now?” drawled Genma, Raido at his side. Kotetsu, still laughing, lit up even further as he saw an opportunity to truly embarrass Izumo.

“No, Ko’, don’t…”

His pleas fell on deaf ears. “Genma… Genma! Izumo’s _secret admirer_ just gave him a copy of _Icha Icha Paradise_.”

Up until that point, Izumo had thought that the phrase ‘rolling on the floor laughing’ was just an expression. 

Genma, however, was as shocked as Izumo had ever seen him. The man’s mouth was opened so widely that his senbon had fallen out. His face flashed through a series of emotions—surprise, disbelief, anger, resignation, and then a sort of cool, contained irritation—almost faster than Izumo could perceive. His eye twitched minutely. 

“Excuse me,” Genma said, cutting Kotetsu off. “I have an idiot genius to go threaten.”

Izumo’s eyes widened. Even Kotetsu paused his laughing fit to listen. “Wait!” cried Izumo. “Do you know who he is?”

Genma shook his head and flickered away.

“Genma! No, tell me!” protested Izumo futilely. The jounin was already gone. 

Next to them, Raido slapped a hand to his forehead and groaned. “Really, it’s got to be him?” he muttered.

Izumo’s head snapped over towards Raido. “Do you know who it is?” Had Raido said ‘him’? So it was a man, then! Kotetsu finally plopped himself back into his seat, eager to hear the gossip as well.

Raido moved his hand so that he could stare at them. “You can’t think of anyone? A jounin, socially awkward, who would think that Icha Icha is an appropriate courting gift?”

Kotetsu gaped at Raido. “No way, you mean…?”

After a beat, Izumo got it. “Kakashi?”

“Kakashi,” Raido confirmed. 

There was a long pause. Izumo didn’t really know Kakashi very well. They ran in different circles, although he’d certainly _seen_ the other man before. He was blushing again, this time for an entirely different reason. 

Kotetsu, apparently sensing the direction his thoughts were turning, tried to head him off at the pass. “No. No, no, no. No, Izumo. You cannot date Kakashi. Hatake reads porn in public!”

“I just think _one_ date would be polite, after all the work Kakashi put in,” hedged Izumo. 

His friend sliced his hand through the air as if trying to decapitate the hypothetical date (or maybe the hypothetical Kakashi). “He tried to give you Icha Icha Paradise as a courting gift. You! Porn! Izumo!” Apparently Kotetsu had lost his higher reasoning skills. 

“Well,” Izumo chirped brightly. “I liked the other three gifts. Three out of four isn’t bad!”

“Izumo, you thought the flowers were a _death threat_ ,” protested Kotetsu. 

“The flowers were perfectly nice!” Izumo said dismissively, ignoring the fact that Kotetsu was right, and also that the flowers hadn’t even lasted a whole day before wilting completely.

Kotetsu gaped like a fish. “But…”

“Besides,” said Izumo decisively. “Kakashi really is very handsome.”

“All you can see of him is one eye," Kotetsu wailed dramatically. 

“Yeah, but it’s a _really_ nice eye though,” sighed Izumo breathily. It was a really nice eye, attached to a really nice man who’d been going out of his way to give Izumo presents. He was sure that Kakashi would be perfectly charming if given a proper chance. 

“I- I give up,” proclaimed Kotetsu. He turned towards their third companion. “Raido, help me out here.”

Raido gazed at the two of them thoughtfully, before sighing. “Izumo, last I heard, Kakashi challenged Gai to a paper crane folding competition in training ground seventeen. I don’t think Genma knew, so if you hurry you might be able to beat him there.”

“Traitor,” hissed Kotetsu.

At the same time, Izumo leapt to his feet, throwing a cheery “Thanks, Raido!” behind him as he hurried over towards training ground seventeen. 

When he got there… he didn’t mean to eavesdrop on them… It was just that they didn’t notice him, too absorbed in their conversation and competition. Izumo loitered on the edge of the clearing, staring incredulously at the literal hundreds of paper cranes littering the clearing. 

“Yosh! My one True Rival! Though you burn with the Fires of Youth, I will win this great battle of ours, and then you must ask your Lovely Flower on a Romantic Date!”

Izumo flushed at the ‘lovely flower’ comment. He probably shouldn’t be listening to them talk about him. 

“Hmm. You think he’ll say yes?” Kakashi looked and sounded completely casual (as casual as one could be while folding paper cranes ambidextrously at breakneck pace), but there was a certain alertness to him that made Izumo think that he was concerned about the answer.

“How could he not?!? You have given him gifts of True Love, and showed him your Unbridled Passion for his Youthful Body!” Gai proclaimed, somehow managing to strike his Nice Guy pose, thumbs-up, gleaming tooth and all… while still folding a paper crane in his free hand. 

“You’re sure that Icha Icha wasn’t too much?” Kakashi (understandably) sounded somewhat skeptical. 

“Too much?! Nonsense! Your Delicate, Youthful Lily should know about your Manly Virility and Erupting Amorousness-”

Izumo knew he _definitely_ shouldn’t be eavesdropping on this, so he interrupted them… by rapping his knuckles on the tree next to him, as if it were a doorframe. Immediately he flushed in embarrassment. Really, Izumo? Knocking on a tree?

Nevertheless, it seemed to work. Kakashi’s head jerked up, and his visible eye widened, before he slouched down into a much cooler, more nonchalant pose. Gai, on the other hand, leapt to his feet. 

“Yosh! Kakashi, it seems that your Unbridled Passion and Hip Attitude has summoned your One True-”

Suddenly, Kakashi was standing next to the Beautiful Green Beast, hand slapped over Gai’s mouth. The jounin chuckled, sounding nervous. 

“Ah, Gai… I bet you can’t run a hundred laps around Konoha before I finish my conversation with Izumo,” he goaded. 

Gai tore himself from Kakashi’s grasp. “My Eternal Rival! I will best you in this Youthful Challenge, and take the lead in our Unending Competition!” With that, the green-clad man sprinted full speed towards the boundary of the village. 

Izumo blinked, staring in amazement at the trail of dust Gai kicked up in his wake. He didn’t have much time to contemplate Konoha’s Beautiful Green Beast, though, because Kakashi was suddenly leaning against the tree beside him. Somehow he’d also managed to clear the training grounds of all evidence of the Paper Crane Challenge.

“Yo,” greeted the jounin.

It should’ve been ridiculously lame, but Izumo couldn’t help but find it cute how hard Kakashi was trying to seem unaffected. 

“Hey,” said Izumo with a smile. “I… I got your gifts.”

“Oh?” Kakashi asked casually. “Were they- um. Did you like them?”

Izumo beamed. “Yeah. They were great. It was really thoughtful of you.” He didn’t have the heart to comment negatively about Icha Icha Paradise. 

A tension that Izumo hadn’t noticed before melted from Kakashi’s face. “Good! Gai said- I mean, there’s the four perfect gifts: flowers, chocolate, something useful, and something personal.”

“They were perfect,” agreed Izumo. Suddenly feeling bold, he added: “But I haven’t gotten a chance to get _you_ anything. Let me buy you dinner tomorrow?”

It was obvious that Kakashi was smiling, even with the mask in the way. 

“Yeah, that be- that’d be great.”

~

Epilogue:

“Close your eyes.”

Izumo obeyed giddily. Soon, he’d finally be able to enact his plan. He sighed as he felt Kakashi lean against him, wrapping his arms around the jounin. Kakashi’s lips met his own, and Izumo couldn’t help but to sigh a little. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed, but it made his heart swoop in his chest every time. In fact, it nearly drove him to distraction, but once he felt Kakashi’s hands on his back he leapt into action. 

Izumo quickly leant backwards and opened his eyes, finally taking the chance to see… Kakashi’s masked face.

“How?” he gasped. “Kakashi! Your hands were on my back the whole time! How did you pull your mask up?”

“Hm?” Kakashi asked innocently. “What do you mean? My mask was on the whole time.”

“It was not,” protested Izumo. “Your tongue was in my mouth!”

Kakashi gasped. “Izumo! You’ll scandalize the children!” He gestured to the bushes behind which his three genin were (poorly) hiding themselves. They each wore identical expressions of disappointment. Apparently they’d wanted to see Kakashi’s face as well. 

“He’s not lying, Izumo,” Sakura said glumly. “He never took his mask off.” Naruto and Sasuke nodded in agreement from either side of her. 

“What? You- Argh!” Izumo rolled his eyes so hard they hurt, and stalked off in the opposite direction. He was dating the most _ridiculous_ man in the village. 

“Was it something I did?” Kakashi asked his students, baffled.

But—Izumo thought, suppressing a smile—he wouldn’t wish it any differently. 

~  
Fin

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: The fact that every sentence Gai utters ends with an exclamation mark is entirely intentional.


End file.
